Entertainment

Tweetmondo Finds Local Twitter Users in Realtime

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Quick Pitch: Tweetmondo finds local Twitter users and shows you where they are on a map.

Warning: Tweetmondo sends out an auto-tweet after registration.

Genius Idea: It's becoming clear that location-based services are in high demand. The rise of GPS-enabled phones, LBS adoption, and social networking has created a need for location-based social networks and tools. Twitter's no exception - in fact, we highlighted 9 different ways to find local Twitter users last month. Tweetmondo, however, seeks to drive location-based Twitter applications to another level with filtering and realtime features.

The Twitter application makes a simple promise: give it a location (the more specific, the better) and it will tell you which Twitter users are nearby. For example, I was just at the Googleplex (for a tweetup), so I typed in "Googleplex" and, in a few seconds, I was provided with a Google Map containing Twitter profile pictures and a list of people who were likely to be nearby.

That alone is nice, but Tweetmondo's additional features help you really hone your results. They key is the precision gauge; this will tell you how accurate Tweetmondo believes it is as to the location of specific Twitter users. From there, you can filter results (i.e. only show me users with a 50% precision level or better) and even exclude anyone without a certain number of followers.

It also has a "keep me updated" feature - if you activate this, Tweetmondo will DM you whenever a new person is found at that location - a nice touch. The last kicker is that Tweetmondo works in realtime; just like Twitter Search, it will show you if new people are in the area and will ask you to refresh to see their information. It will also show you how many minutes or hours ago someone was located by the app.

While Tweetmondo's features are detailed and well thought out, they don't matter if it doesn't accurately find nearby Twitter users. In that regard, Tweetmondo is only above average - it's useful for finding people who actually live nearby, but not as adept at finding people right now. Of course, it's tough to know where someone exactly is unless they announce it or they update their location with an app like Foursquare. Still, Tweetmondo's feature set, especially its "keep me updated" feature, make it a useful Twitter location-based service.

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